From Azaleas to Zydeco

My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Mark W. Nichols

Publication Year: 2014

Inspired by a 1937 map and travelogue of a newspaperman’s tour, author Mark W. Nichols embarked on his own long journey into the unique cities of the South. En route he met beekeepers, cheese makers, crawfish “bawlers,” duck callers, and a licensed alligator hunter, as well as entrepreneurs and governors. His keen observations encompass the southern states from Virginia to Arkansas and points south, and he unpacks the unique qualities of every city he visits.
“It’s easy to say that getting to meet so many interesting and wonderful people was the best part of the journey--because it’s true,” Nichols writes. “I know there are friendly people everywhere, but southern friendliness is different.” His story embraces a wealth of southern charm from local characters, folklore, and customs to food, music, and dancing. Besides being just plain fun to read, Nichols’s account of his journey gives readers a true taste of the flavor of the evolving modern South.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

I have refrained from following the advice of Clay Travis about
acknowledgments in his hilarious book about SEC football, Dixieland
Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference. He says to mention as many people as you can because it will aid in book sales. But I’m keeping my acknowledgments brief....

Introduction

A few years ago, I visited a coffee shop in a small midwestern town.
The shop’s owner leased space to a local entrepreneur who sold used books.
The books sat on crude wooden shelves in no particular order. On one shelf
I saw an old frayed volume, its tan cover bordered in faded green. The spine...

The Third Battle of Manassas

Jonathan Daniels began his 4,600-mile Journey crossing the Potomac
River from the District of Columbia into Virginia on what was then a new
bridge. He stopped to talk with a retiree fishing off the bridge before going
on to the Custis-Lee House at Arlington National Cemetery. He writes:...

Polo Place

It’s hard to know precisely when you leave NoVa. Uncut grass lots
and buildings needing a paint job dot the sides of the highway. Handpainted
signs nailed to trees advertise local tradesmen. There’s still a lot
of traffic, but no longer urban. Things are beginning to look southern....

Travel Notes: What’s a Cavalier?

When the United States first became populated with white people,
most of them came from Great Britain. Puritans went north to New
England. The South, which at that time consisted only of Virginia, got
Cavaliers. I’m not sure why these Englishmen migrated to different
places, but it may have to do with the fact that they didn’t get along too
well back in the motherland....

RVa

Some thirty years ago, a Virginia author named Garrett Epps wrote
The Shad Treatment, a novel set in Richmond, the capital city of Virginia, introducing his reader to an aristocracy that ruled the city. The aristocracy dominated the rosters of two social clubs, the Country Club of Virginia and the Commonwealth Club. They owned weekend retreats on the...

All Come to Look for America

In 1780, the state of Virginia moved its capital from Williamsburg to
Richmond. For the next century and a half, time passed Williamsburg by
and it deteriorated. In February 1924, the rector of the local Williamsburg
Episcopal Church attended a Phi Beta Kappa dinner in New York City. The
rector met John D. Rockefeller Jr. there. The rector from that small southern...

Travel Notes: What’s a Tar Heel?

North Carolina has a strange nickname—the Tar Heel State. What,
exactly, is a Tar Heel? Medical condition? Maybe, but probably not. Is it
one word or two? Generally, two. More importantly, why do these people
go by that name?...

Dobbies and Pout Houses

Warren County, North Carolina, sits near the Virginia border. Its
county seat is Warrenton. Jonathan Daniels stopped here in 1937,
supposedly to locate a poker game said to have been going on since the
Civil War. Evidently, the city fathers played poker while letting progress
pass them by. Downtown Warrenton consists mostly of a quaint little...

The Research Triangle

Unlike most southern state capitals, Raleigh doesn’t draw its
economic vitality from an expanding state government. Raleigh’s
vibrancy comes from a bold experiment started some fifty-five years
ago—the Research Triangle. In the early 1950s, Raleigh was designated
one of the vertices in a triangle of research to be formed with Durham...

Sustainability in Greensboro

Greensboro is the major city in the area that North Carolinians call
the Triad, an area formed by the cities Winston-Salem, High Point, and
Greensboro. (Remember, the name “triangle” was taken already.) The
Triad has a population of 1.6 million people. The greenest hotel in
America is located in Greensboro—but not because of the town’s name....

Trains, Furniture, and Krispy Kreme

High Point, North Carolina, is part of the Triad, a bedroom community
for the other two Triad towns, Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
Most of the people I met from High Point commute into Greensboro to
work. But High Point is more than an appendage of Greensboro and
Winston-Salem: It’s the Home Furnishing Capital of the World....

Towel Town No More

In 1906, James W. Cannon built a mill on his 600-acre cotton plantation.
He also built a village beside the mill for the workers. At first,
the village was called Cannon City, but the name was soon changed to
Kannapolis. Some say the name is Greek for “city of looms.” Others
say that J. W. wasn’t that fancy. He didn’t know any Greek and most...

Sister City

When J. W. Cannon built his huge mill complex in Kannapolis, he
lived just down the road in Concord, the county seat of Cabarrus County.
While J. W. and his executives commuted to work in Kannapolis, the
commuter road really only went one way. No one in Kannapolis worked
in Concord. Kannapolians didn’t commute; they lived and worked at the...

They Glue Lug Nuts on Wheels

Recently Charlotte has had two things going for it—banking and
NASCAR. Banking is relatively new. In 1980, only one North Carolina
bank was included in the top twenty-five banking companies in the
United States, and that bank wasn’t headquartered in Charlotte. Twentyfive
years later, Charlotte was the headquarters for two of the country’s...

Ella May’s Ghost

Gastonia was the third former mill town on Jonathan Daniels’
Journey. Closer geographically to downtown Charlotte than Concord
and Kannapolis, it’s been a part of the Charlotte metro area longer. That
relationship hasn’t been so positive for Gastonia. Let’s put it this way,
modern Gastonia could be a finalist in a contest for the Piedmont town...

America’s First Civil War Battle

I left the city behind. Besides the traffic, one of the problems of
spending a few days in a metropolitan area is how quickly you lose
connection with the land. Charlotte is part of the Piedmont, but traveling
around in the center of the city, you lose appreciation of the area’s
natural beauty. Once you leave the city’s tall buildings and concrete, the...

Hub-Bub in the Hub City

Spartanburg, South Carolina, is edgy. Not at all what I thought I
would find here in upstate South Carolina. Spartanburg lies a few miles
from the intersection of Interstate 85 and Interstate 26 some seventyfive
miles west of Charlotte and thirty-five miles from the North Carolina
state line. Some of Spartanburg’s edginess may come from directional...

Downtown New South

Greenville, South Carolina, is a surprisingly large southern town
with a stated population of 71,000. Apparently South Carolina has stringent
laws concerning annexation, so a lot of development has occurred
outside of Greenville proper. Greenville’s population figures don’t really
reflect its metropolitan area or character. The metro area is estimated to...

Jerusalem Artichokes and Robert Kennedy

The ambient temperature changes dramatically where the Carolina
Piedmont gives way to the Appalachian Mountains. It is estimated that
temperature changes three degrees for every thousand feet of elevation
change. So Greenville, which sits at about a thousand feet above sea
level, is much hotter and more humid than the mountain towns as close...

The Mountains

Munching fried peanuts as I left Lester’s place, I looked at the
straight, flat highway ahead of me. A few miles from Lester’s place, a
dramatic rock outcropping known as Caesar’s Head came into clear view.
Apparently this rock feature looked to early travelers like Julius Caesar’s
profile protruding from the mountain, thus the name. Caesar’s Head...

Cashiers

It’s not a mountaintop, but a valley. It’s not an incorporated town,
but a community. It’s not pronounced “Cashears” but “Cashurs.” Despite
its strange name, Cashiers—along with its neighbor town, Highlands—
caters to the high end of the mountain tourist trade....

Franklin

The drive from Cashiers to Franklin is remarkable. It’s about ten miles
from Cashiers to the next town, Highlands. During those ten miles, the
altitude rises about 700 feet through a two-lane mountain road. From
Highlands, it’s twenty miles, mostly downhill, to the town of Franklin,
the county seat of Macon County, North Carolina. On this stretch,...

The Smoky Mountains

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is reputed to be within a
day’s drive of sixty percent of the United States’ population. I don’t know
if I believe this factoid: I guess the critical element would be how one
defines a day’s drive. These people might be coming from St. Louis,
Cleveland, and Washington DC, which I guess you can make in a day’s...

Good Old Rocky Top

To get from Gatlinburg to Knoxville, you pass Pigeon Forge, the home
of Dolly Parton’s theme park, Dollywood. Pigeon Forge’s tourist attractions
seem to be on steroids, much larger and flashier than Gatlinburg’s,
which seem downright old-fashioned in their trashiness. Forget about
the quiet of High Hampton and the quaintness of Ron Haven’s Budget...

Norris, the Planned Community

Remember Lester Galloway, the friendly, unshaven seller of honey
bee brittle and fried peanuts? From his name, I knew he was a probably
a “cracker”—that particular strain of upland South white people who
emigrated from the Celtic areas of Great Britain and populated the
mountainous backwoods of early America....

Hard-bitten Land

Tennessee’s Copper Basin is only a few miles south of U.S. Highway 64.
It’s not so much a basin as a broad valley lodged between a series of hills
near the junction of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. The Copper
Basin has two small towns, Ducktown—named after Chief Duck of the
Cherokees—and Copperhill. It’s also home to one of the prettiest rivers...

A Civil Misunderstanding

Just up from the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, there are two
bookstores: one bright and well lit, featuring new books by regional
authors; the other dark, dusty, and severely over-crowded with shelves
of old books and stuff overflowing onto the floor. The owner of the latter
bookstore, a woman I later discovered was seventy-five years old, greeted...

Alabama Retail

Alabama is about thirty miles from Chattanooga. It’s not the nearest
neighboring state to downtown Chattanooga—that would be Georgia.
The route to Alabama takes you through northwest Georgia. Traveling
through three states in thirty minutes is a record for the Journey....

Alabama Wholesale

Traveling across the top of Alabama, the first real city that appears is
Huntsville. When Jonathan Daniels arrived during his Journey,
Huntsville was a quiet little community that led the state in cotton
production. Today it is well-populated: About 180,000 people live within
the city limits and another 250,000 in the area....

Driving the Natchez Trace Parkway

If I were leaving Florence to catch a plane, I’d travel to Nashville the
same way as Billy Reid does every couple of weeks. I’d start back the way
I came: east on Alabama Highway 72, the famous Lee Highway, to
Interstate 65, which I’d then take north to Nashville. It’s a distance of
150 miles and takes less than two and a half hours, if you’re lucky with...

Nashville Hootenanny

Loveless’ Café sits just outside the Natchez Trace Parkway terminus.
People who went to school in Nashville swear by Loveless’. To be honest,
it looked like one of those chain country restaurants with rocking chairs
out front, the ones you see on interstate exits. I later discovered that it
had expanded recently—opening a live music venue. Locals say that,...

Mississippi Embayment

The rolling hills of middle Tennessee transition to flatland just east of
Memphis. Welcome to the Delta. The Mississippi Embayment is the fancy
name for the lower Mississippi Delta. According to University of Memphis
professors Roy B. Van Arsdale and Randall Cox, this embayment formed
about 95 million years ago when the earth’s crust warped upward from...

Travel Notes: What’s a Julep?

Negotiating the 200 miles from Nashville to Memphis can create a
thirst, and in the capital of the most southern place in America, what
better way is there to quench a road thirst than with a mint julep? I came
to know the mint julep on the Journey. Jonathan Daniels mentioned that
he drank juleps during his travels and took great care to note the regional...

Day Trip to Arkansas

Leaving downtown Memphis, you immediately climb skyward toward
the expanse of steel and cable crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas.
The bridge is high, the river wide. And every time I cross it, I think of the
New Madrid fault, the seismic scar which runs from southern Illinois
through southern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas. From December...

The Delta in Mississippi

Graceland, home of Elvis Presley, is just a few miles from downtown
Memphis. It’s reportedly the most visited house in the country, outside
of the White House. The house is about 17,000 square feet, surprisingly
modest compared to the mansions of modern music stars. It sits prominently
on fourteen acres of land. Even those who aren’t fans of Elvis need...

Cosmopolitan Helena

In the 1930s, Jonathan Daniels had a hard time getting to Helena
from Sherard. It must have taken most of a day because there were
few paved roads and no bridge across the Mississippi, only two ferryboats.
Today it’s a short thirty-minute drive to Helena crossing the
river by way of the bridge at Lula, Mississippi. Beside the bridge is a...

Duck Gumbo

Just past Crowley’s Ridge, the discriminating traveler notices subtle
changes. The land doesn’t change—it’s still flat and open—but now
there’s no cotton. It looks like those pictures of Vietnam: rice paddies
with humped irrigation ditches snaking throughout the fields. You’re in
the Grand Prairie....

Meeting the Governor

Though it has a large landmass, Arkansas is a small state. With a
population of less than three million people, its citizens tend to know
(or know about) one another. Some people contend that Bill Clinton
met more than half the entire state’s population before getting his
promotion to Washington....

Water, Water Everywhere

Hot Springs, Arkansas, a small city of about 35,000 people, is about
as far west as this Journey goes. Williamsburg and the Atlantic coast are
over 1,000 miles away. Indian country, the Oklahoma border, is less than
100 miles away. We’re in the center of America now. The U.S. Census
Bureau places America’s population center in southwestern Missouri, a
few hundred miles to the north of Hot Springs....

I’m Only 75

Lake Chicot, the largest oxbow lake in North America, is located in
the southeastern corner of Arkansas just before you get to the Greenville
Bridge which crosses the Mississippi River. An oxbow lake forms when a
river bend gets separated from the river. In this case, Lake Chicot used
to be a big bend in the Mississippi River, but around 600 years ago, the...

Nitta Yuma

The Delta can be seen as a collection of small dying villages as
America consolidates into metropolitan areas. If you look at maps from
the 1930s, there were a lot of small towns in the Mississippi Delta. Most
of them are gone now. In the Mississippi Delta, each new major northsouth
road was built on higher ground farther from the river. Highway...

A Coffee Shop in Vicksburg

The sudden appearance of hills reinforced the impression that I was
no longer in the Delta. I hadn’t seen a hill or even a hillock since I left
Hot Springs. Arriving in Vicksburg, I’d left the Delta behind.
David Cohen, a twentieth-century writer from Greenville,
Mississippi, has said the Delta starts at the steps of the Peabody Hotel
and ends in Vicksburg. Vicksburg and Natchez, its neighbor to the south,...

Mississippi Praying

Like Little Rock, Jackson is a small, livable city of about 185,000
people. Jackson has sprawled to the north, and the metropolitan area is
about two to three times that number. At the intersection of I-55 and I-
520, shiny new multi-story buildings house old-line law firms, banks, and
other white-collar enterprises. Ten miles north in Canton, a Nissan plant...

Wide Spot on Highway 28

The modern route from Jackson to Natchez doesn’t go through Union
Church, Mississippi, like it did in the 1930s. Interstate 55 passes thirty
miles east and takes you twenty miles south of Union Church where it
intersects with the new four-lane highway to Natchez. The old route,
Mississippi State Highway 28, winds through the gently rolling hills and...

Not a Soul in Sight

In Tidewater Virginia, I traveled the Colonial Parkway. I passed near
the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple of times while traveling through the
mountains of western North Carolina. I spent a great afternoon traveling
from Florence, Alabama, to Nashville, Tennessee, on the Natchez
Trace Parkway....

The Rose Lady Comes to Camellia Land

Founded in 1716, Natchez is older than Vicksburg, which wasn’t settled
by Europeans for another ninety-five years. Natchez is prettier, largely
due to its treatment during the Civil War. Residents from both cities
claim that Natchez surrendered after one shot. It’s a point of pride in
Natchez. Only one Natchez house was destroyed during the Yankee
occupation because the locals tried to get along with the invaders. The...

The Salon at Ravennaside

Salon is a French word meaning “large room,” but it also means a
gathering of people to meet, discuss ideas, or watch artistic performances.
Ravennaside is a 10,000-square-foot Colonial Revival house built
in Natchez in 1902 on three acres of land. As I attended a formal luncheon
at Ravennaside, the word salon kept coming to me. The first
meaning was apparent given the mansion’s magnificent public rooms....

McDonald’s Comes to St. Francisville

Louisiana was the eighth state on the Journey. They call things by
different names here. The local governmental unit known as a county
in the other forty-nine states is a parish in Louisiana. Most people say
it’s the French-Canadian influence. Except that the French-Canadians,
known as Cajuns, settled the land on the west side of the Mississippi...

Crossing the River by Ferryboat

St. Francisville is on high ground, and the Mississippi River is but a
few miles away. Leaving St. Francisville, you immediately descend toward
the river.
After a couple of curves, the landing for the St. Francisville/New
Roads ferryboat comes into view. This boat carries traffic from Louisiana
Highway 10 across the Mississippi River. The ferry leaves on the hour...

Baton Rouge, Huey Long, and the Movie Industry

Baton Rouge lies on the east bank of the Mississippi River, so coming
from New Roads, I crossed the river again. The river widens at every
crossing. It’s now a monster.
Baton Rouge got its name from a boundary line. The Indians marked
the boundary between their hunting grounds on this bluff by stripping a
red cypress tree of its bark. As the French explorers progressed up river,...

On to Opelousas

Taking the Acadiana Trail due west from Baton Rouge, the next stop
is Opelousas (pronounced “OPP a luses”). Opelousas is the capital of the
Cajun Prairie and self-proclaimed world zydeco capital. Arriving at the
city center of Opelousas late Friday afternoon, I asked the nice ladies at
the tourist information center if there would be “any zydeco dancing...

Travel Notes:What’s a Coon Ass?

A Cajun is defined as “a Louisianan who descends from Frenchspeaking
Acadians.” Cajun history begins with the Great Derangement,
or as the Acadians say, “Le Grand Dérangement.” After the French and
Indian War, the British expelled thousands of French Catholic settlers
from the maritime provinces of eastern Canada and the coastal region...

Cajun vs. Coon Ass

Now against this backdrop—where I knew that it might be inappropriate
to call a Cajun a coon ass—I asked Byron Zaunbrecher if he
were Cajun. He said, “Hell no! I’m a coon ass and proud of it.” He did
not seem to appreciate my question. Since I was his guest and he was
much bigger than me, I let the matter drop. But I was still curious....

Zydeco Dancing

It’s nighttime and I’m in a strange town. I ask the clerk at my hotel
about Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki Club. “You should’ve been here last week because
Chris Ardoin played,” she said. “I’m not sure they will be open tonight
if no one is playing.”
She recommended a restaurant which was on the way to Slim’s. She
advised that I’d have plenty of time to eat because things wouldn’t get...

Boudin, Sugar Cane Farming, and More Crawfish

Just when you think America has become a homogenized collection
of subdivisions and franchised retail operations radiating from interstate
exits, just when it seems that the Journey is reduced to traveling from one
McDonald’s location to another, glimpses of regional differences peek out.
One example of regional identity occurs on I-59, outside of Opelousas,...

The Road to New Orleans

Before heading to New Orleans, I decided to swing by Avery Island.
The island is home to approximately 2,000 people and is still entirely owned,
I think, by the McIlhenny family. The island is one of five salt domes rising
above the Gulf and is, quite literally, a mountain of salt surrounded by
swamps and marshes. The salt is mined from a shaft 530 feet deep....

Once the Levees Break

Let’s face it: New Orleans is a strange place. New Orleans reminds
me of my crazy uncle, the husband of my dad’s twin sister. A dentist by
profession, he moved his family to the Georgia barrier islands and opened
an office. His office hours were arranged to fit his golf and party schedule.
He didn’t mind working, but he wanted to have some fun along the way....

Mississippi Gulf Coast

Ten miles east of New Orleans, there is no city, just wild marshlands,
a narrow strip of lowland with a road running through the middle of it.
The Gulf of Mexico is on the right, Lake Pontchartrain on the left. No
old buildings sit on this land; Katrina blew them away. New vacation
houses, simple structures built on stilts covered with plastic siding, stick...

Travel Notes: Beauvoir

Beauvoir, the retirement home of Jefferson Davis, the only president
of the Confederate States of America, was built in 1852. Davis purchased
Beauvoir some years after the Yankees charged him with treason but let
him go without a trial. After his death, his wife sold the property to the
Mississippi division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans on the condition...

Mobile

Sometimes you have to wonder whether it’s the town or you.
Sometimes the wind is at your back; sometimes not. Sometimes things
just seem to jibe; other times they don’t. I arrived in downtown Mobile
late one morning without anything planned. None of the feelers I sent
before coming had borne fruit. Without any appointments, I walked...

Hank, Biscuits, and Green Roofs

Montgomery is the capital of the Black Belt, Alabama’s cottongrowing
area. In his 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery, Booker T.
Washington wrote of the Black Belt:

The term was first used to designate a part of the country which was
distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the country
possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the...

Forty Miles to Tuskegee

It’s only forty miles from Montgomery to Tuskegee, but the cultural
distance is much greater—from the first capital of the Confederacy to a
town nationally known as a center of African-American achievement.
Tuskegee is home to Tuskegee University, perhaps the most influential
private, historically black university in the country. Founded in 1881,...

Fender Bender in Birmingham

Birmingham—pronounced “Buuminham” by the natives—is a
major southern city. The metropolitan area contains almost one and a
quarter million people. This constitutes almost twenty-five percent of
Alabama’s total population. Even though the metropolitan area has
grown, the city of Birmingham has not. Its population peaked at 340,000...

Travel Notes: Iced or Hot? Sweet or Un?

Quick now, what’s the quintessential southern drink? If you guessed
anything other than tea, you lose. Tea is the second-most-popular beverage
in the world, trailing water in worldwide consumption. But hot tea
in the hot South isn’t all that popular a beverage. Around these parts,
when you speak of tea, you mean iced tea. And not just iced tea because...

Metropolitan Atlanta

Atlanta and Birmingham are not far apart—less than 150 miles on
I-20 from downtown to downtown. Other than the occasional
Confederate bumper-stickered pickup truck you could be pretty much
anywhere in America, one interstate exit after another with national
chains advertising their products from large signs. There’s also lots of...

Traveling South Georgia

South Georgia is defined as anyplace south of metropolitan Atlanta.
It’s about 250 miles from the center of Atlanta to the state line of Florida,
and the state is about 250 miles wide. So it’s a large landmass. I’d never
been to South Georgia and must admit to a certain prejudice. In 1975, I
remember expressing surprise that my father, a Georgia native, was not...

Happy Animals. Good Cheese.

I took the back roads leaving Providence Canyon. Just before getting
back on the highway, I saw a couple of quail hot-footing it along the road.
Appropriate, since I was headed to Thomasville, the next stop on the
map and the epicenter of Georgia bird hunting. Fifty or so plantations
around Thomasville provide some of the best quail hunting in the United...

Tallahassee

I arrived in Tallahassee after a summer rainstorm. It’s a pretty city,
with oak trees, Spanish moss, and rolling hills. At first, I thought the lack
of activity downtown was due to the weather. I found other southern state
capital cities—Jackson, Montgomery, Little Rock—pretty lively compared
to the capital of the Union’s fifth-largest state on that July evening. Even
Thomasville, Georgia, was perkier than downtown Tallahassee....

Ybor City

Central Florida sure is a crowded place. The St. Petersburg–Tampa
area, which covers only a portion of the western side of central Florida,
has a population equal to the population of the entire state of Arkansas
and only slightly less than the population of South Carolina....

Cracker from Kissimmee

Orlando is as far south as the Journey took me. Little Rock and Hot
Springs are almost 1,000 miles away and the nation’s capital is over 900
miles to the north. There’s still plenty of Florida left below us. Miami is
almost 300 miles farther south, and Key West is over 400 miles away. But
those places are in South Florida. It’s different and not truly southern. It...

The First Coast

Branding—creating catchy names for places—can sometimes go too
far. In Florida, branding has gotten out of hand. Due east of Orlando is
the Space Coast, which has famous Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space
Center, and rocket ship launchings. To the north is the two-county Fun
Coast, which includes Daytona Beach. After the Fun Coast, the First Coast...

Stuck in South Georgia

Jacksonville is a major American city with tall buildings, a large
university, and even an NFL football team. It also has all of the problems
of a modern American city: sprawl, traffic, crime. Plus one problem that
most metropolitan areas don’t have—nuisance alligators. Now I’m not
suggesting that nuisance alligators are a huge problem—unless you’re
caught in an alligator’s jaws....

Savannah

After spending the day stuck in the sands of South Georgia and
staying late with Jackie Carter, I arrived in Savannah very late and very
hungry. I asked the desk clerk for a restaurant recommendation. She
replied, “All the restaurants have closed their kitchens by now, but I bet
you can find a bar down the street that will serve you something.” A real...

Travel Notes: Georgilina

The free magazines set out on most hotel room desks are a perk of
modern travel. Savannah’s River Inn featured the current issue of the
Savannah Magazine, which was celebrating twenty years of publication.
The magazine had invited its readers to submit “20 Big Ideas for Our
Future.” Big Idea #3 caught my eye: “Erase the South Carolina/Georgia
state line and think in bioregional rather than political terms.”...

Coastalitis

In A Southerner Discovers the South, Jonathan Daniels relates a
conversation with a Savannah doctor who described the residents of the
low country as “the most ignorant, pitiful, and poverty-stricken whites
in Georgia….Many of them are scrawny humans hardly fit for oppression…[
One] boy, sent to Savannah, had malaria, hookworm, pellagra...

Carolina Gold

Charleston would be a great place to end my ten-state Journey of
the South. Confident and bustling, Charleston seems to be the dynamic
city of the modern South. No doubt the arrival of the Boeing plant has
given Charleston a boomtown atmosphere. Boeing’s decision to build
its new Boeing 787 aircraft in North Charleston required a 600,000....

Flatland to Fall Line

Jonathan Daniels didn’t end his Journey of years ago in Charleston.
He made the terminus Columbia, the last city Sherman destroyed
during the Civil War.
The drive from Charleston to Columbia takes about two hours.
Leaving the low country, it’s a trip across the coastal plain of South
Carolina into an area known as the midlands, the start of South...

Epilogue: June 2013

Reviewing the manuscript brings back many great memories of
touring the South. But I’m reminded that nothing stays the same. Some
changes, like those to Mr. Jefferson’s University, Kings Mountain, and
Andersonville, are slow and imperceptible. Some changes are dramatic.
The Gulf Coast has endured another environmental disaster. Tornados...

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